Permission under Section 11
Waterfront owners are no longer able to get provincial permission to build or repair retaining walls on the foreshore. This change happened in 2023, and it seems it’s here to stay. Waterfront owners still have a common law right to protect their properties from erosion, but this right is now being ignored by staff at the Ministry of Water, Land & Resource Stewardship (WLRS).
Permission under Section 11 of the Water Sustainability Act is required for “work in and around water.” If works proceed without this permission, then owners are thrown into the RAPR process and there is no way to ever get approval no matter how long they try or how much money they spend. It ultimately leads to either provincial or CSRD enforcement and an order to remove the wall. The province has the authority to do the removal and charge the owner the cost but they typically use CSRD Bylaw enforcement who happily take on the work. A Riparian Development Permit is required for any works within 30 m of the lake. This gives the CSRD the authority to issue fines and generally make the owner’s lives miserable.
This is reminiscent of the old Shuswap Lake Integrated Planning Process (SLIPP) days when the province was aggressively removing boat launches and trying to get docks removed from semi-waterfront properties. SLIPP was eventually discredited and the province backed off on the dock issue. This whole atmosphere of intimidation and bad science helped spawn CSRD Bylaw 900 to regulate docks and buoys on Shuswap and Mara Lakes. A topic for another day.
So what happens now if your property is experiencing erosion? The staff at WLRS will allow you to slope the foreshore of your lot at 6:1 and protect it with coco mat erosion blankets. Flashback to SLIPP again. One of the documents WLRS is relying on is the 2011 Ecoscapes report commissioned by SLIPP and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. This report concluded that too big a percentage of the shoreline on Shuswap Lake is hard surfaced and no more retaining walls should be allowed. Apparently the author never boated up Seymour, Anstey, or Salmon Arm.
The irony is that sloping your foreshore at 6:1 usually results in removal of riparian vegetation, the very values the province is supposed to be protecting. There also isn’t room on most waterfront lots to do this aggressive sloping. It also introduces a problem with no solution. WLRS requires an engineer to sign off on the works before permission under Section 11 is granted. Engineers in BC are required to design erosion control works that can withstand a 200 year flood event so getting an engineer to sign off on this type of treatment is not possible.
There will have to be some recognition at the political level if we can ever hope to see this change.